The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • More intrigues ahead 2019

    LET me begin with a confession – my birth certificate is missing.

    I never really bothered about the piece of paper, until recently when a friend of mine sought my advice on a matter he described as crucial and urgent. Some people had conspired to eject him from the Elders Corner, he said, sounding so troubled.

    “Elders’ Corner? Where is that?” I asked incredulously.

    “It is the reserved part of that popular pub where I relax after work,” he replied in a subdued tone.

    “Why would they do that?”

    “I don’t know. I got there yesterday and one old man threatened to order that I be walked out. He said, ‘Look, I give you one week to produce your birth certificate. I want to be sure you are qualified to sit here.’ They say they are not comfortable with my interventions in the intellectual spar that is the order of the day at the Elders Corner.”

    My friend has no birth certificate. I advised him to get a police report that the document was stolen by a Lagos pickpocket who attacked him while he was job-hunting. He will then walk up to a court to swear to an affidavit.

    Details?

    “That I am, indeed and in fact, the said Adewale Oreofero Ayelabowo. That, according to the information I received from my parents, which I verily believe to be true and correct, that I was born on the 3rd day of August 1955 at United Stars Hospital, Ile-Ogbon. That at the time of my birth, my birth certificate was obtained but later got lost in transit and all efforts to trace it proved abortive. That this affidavit is now required for record purposes… .”

    Lucky guy. Now he sits comfortably in the Elders Corner.

    What is the weight of a certificate? It was fashionable when I was growing up to see signboards erected by tailors reading “London trained”. Every tailor worth his tape rule and scissors had it emblazoned on his sign board. Needless to say, neither the customers nor the authorities demanded to see these London certificates, even as some of those who proclaimed having them as proof of their remarkable skills were always locked in bitter rows with customers over some bad tailoring.

    So, is a certificate proof of competence or a mere fulfillment of some conditions?

    Lying there in the wardrobe or on a shelf in the library, it is actually like any other document. But, in the hands of mischief makers and politicians, it is a veritable weapon of destruction to be deployed against a vulnerable opponent.

    Consider Kemi Adeosun. The former Finance Minister was having a time of her life running our Exchequer until her traducers stepped in with the NYSC certificate scandal. After fending off attacks over the matter for some time, she was convinced that she had been surrounded, she surrendered and fled the country. She threw in the towel, dropping a job she had done with so much passion and panache.

    It turned out that Mrs Adeosun had obtained a certificate of exemption that  turned out to be fake.  Her fate remains the subject of intense speculations and postulations in newsrooms, staff rooms and restrooms. Who let the cat out of the bag? Why? Should possession of a fake NYSC exemption certificate be enough to end such a glowing career? Was it a moral issue or a criminal matter or both and more?

    The very people who were said to have obtained the fake paper for Mrs Adeosun are being touted as the brains behind her ordeal. Why did she allow it? Naivety?  Sheer impunity? Ignorance?

    Communications Minister Adebayo Shittu’s governorship ambition is almost up in flames. He is in court fighting a battle of integrity after being elbowed out of the race for not having an NYSC discharge certificate. By the time the case ends, Shittu may be able to retrieve his integrity, but the race for Oyo State governor may have been concluded.

    A senior Kwara State Government official being tipped for a bigger job is said to be considering withdrawing because he lacks an NYSC discharge certificate.

    One popular senator found a way around the problem. Instead of dropping his governorship ambition, he simply corralled a school headmaster and others to facilitate a grand plot to outwit the West African Examinations Council (WAEC). He got a surrogate to sit the exam for him. The plot went awry, however. The surrogate fled the exam hall, scaled the school fence and escaped. He was eventually seized and he sang like a bird.

    Now the senator is facing charges over the misadventure.

    Did the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) expect President Muhammadu Buhari to behave like the senator? The way the party has been hammering on Buhari’s school certificate, it is almost as if next year’s election will actually be determined by that document, at least from the PDP’s and its sympathisers’ wonky perspective.

    First they said he had no such papers, adding that Buhari lied when he claimed that it was in the possession of the military. WAEC presented an attestation to Buhari. Case closed? No. The PDP said it was a political certificate and questioned the integrity of the exam body. The matter soon became a semantic contestation. What is an attestation? How is it different from a re-issue?  Is an attestation a certification? Or a clarification? Or a validation? Or an acclamation? Or an affirmation?

    But, can we blame the PDP for holding so tightly onto the forgery claim? Its stand is perhaps buoyed by the fact that lawyers forge – of all things – court judgments to feather their legal nests. The Chief Justice of Nigeria dropped the bombshell. And no lawyer has contradicted him.

    It is to be noted that the Buhari certificate matter has since become the subject of beer parlour jokes. A fresh primary school leaver is asking his mum where to keep his certificate. She replies: “Why don’t you keep it with the military since they say Buhari’s certificate is there?”

    The young boy replies: “Military? That was before Boko Haram started attacking armouries. Even Buhari’s is said to be missing now.”

    Yet another. A man tells a job interviewer that he possesses an array of certificates, including ICAN, HND, B.Sc and others. “Fantastic. Wonderful,” the official said, nodding. “Please, tender them.”

    “They are not here,” he replied, adding: “They are at the military secretariat.”

    “What! Not even photocopies?”

    “I’m not lying sir. Even Buhari’s own is there.”

    If the PDP feels it can latch onto the certificate matter to win next year’s election, that will be like bringing a knife to a gunfight. The battle will be fought on records; what a party did in 16 years and threatened to continue until fate supervened to stop our journey to Venezuela; and what the other has done in three and a half years.

    APC need not fret whenever PDP raises any allegation, no matter how serious or frivolous. It is not every time it should take an offence when offences are offered. Otherwise, people will start asking: where is your sense of humour?

    And lest I forget, my birth certificate remains missing. Should I get an attestation?

     

    A new minimum wage – at last

    AFTER a long battle that would have peaked in a massive strike, the government has agreed that a new minimum wage is not only desirable but imminent. But the argument over what to pay seems to have remained unresolved.

    States are pushing for N22,500. The Federal Government seems to be comfortable with N24,000. Workers are demanding N30,0O00. The committee set up by the Federal Government to resolve the matter has recommended N30,000 for the least paid worker.

    •NLC chief Wabba
    •NLC chief Wabba

    President Buhari has promised to send a bill to the National Assembly on the new minimum wage. But the arguments are yet to go away. Some emergency experts have said a pay rise for those at the bottom of the ladder will spark more inflation. Others say states, which have found it so tough paying N18,000, will go bankrupt in a desperate attempt to pay, asking: where will the cash come from? Will taxes go up?

    What is crystal clear in all this is that a new pay is on the way. This demands that workers justify the package with better work ethics. As for where the cash will come from, we can take a look at what our pampered lawmakers’ haul – some N11.3m monthly,  just inallowances. The salary remains one of the best kept secrets in any democracy. Cut their outrageous pay; stop the rich from evading taxes, rein in corrupt officials and step up the diversification battle.

    For Ekweremadu

    Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu has cried out over an “assassination attempt” in his Abuja home. The police are holding four of their men who were on duty when the incident happened. Also being held is Mohammed Yusuf from Kaura Namoda, Zamfara State. Another suspect is being sought. The National Assembly – ever so dutiful and fast – has vowed to probe the matter. Southeast governors have been so swift in examining the matter; they have rejected the police report that put it down as a burglary.

    Who wants to kill Ekweremadu? Why? I really don’t know.

    One cheeky fellow has suggested that the plot, if it actually existed, could have been triggered by the revelation that the distinguished senator may have been stockpiling cash after allegedly selling off some of the 22 or so houses he is accused of  owning around the world.

    See how envious some people can get?

  • Time to end this ruling class

    The heathen dialectic of Nigerian politics is sweepingly comprehensive and accurate about electorate mind and nature. Nigerians vote for tribe, money, and random bigotries.

    People vote to actualise hate or latent hostilities. Thus the Nigerian voter’s card actuates internalised hatred for a religious group or ethnic divide, seasonally. The 2015 general elections, for instance, assumed a landmark in the country’s celebration of hate and bigotries. The electorate, severely divided, along religious and ethnic divides, voted for Muhammadu Buhari and Goodluck Jonathan in fulfilment of ugly stereotypes. Few voters could convincingly articulate their reasons for choosing either Buhari or Jonathan; true, a depressed economy, skyrocketing inflation and embarrassing corruption across government tiers substantiated the debate for and against either candidate, but for most voters, the decisive factor was the religious affiliation and ethnic root of the contestants.

    The malady subsists till date; as Nigeria prepares for the 2019 general elections, the electorate separates into two conflicting factions, spawned on ethnic and religious bigotries. Devious politicians capitalise, as usual, on the people’s illiteracy, awakening dormant hostilities even as they accentuate familiar bigotries.

    Even though Buhari and supposedly strongest rival, Atiku Abubakar, both hail from the north and are both Muslim, large segments of the electorate do battle in the candidates’ names, for an even more dangerous bigotry, intolerance for the anti-corruption fight.

    There is no gainsaying Buhari and his team has made a mess of his much vaunted anti-corruption campaign but saner folk would rather root for Buhari, guided by his sparse victories or semblances of ‘Change’ instead of a baggage-infested Atiku.

    Notwithstanding arguments to the contrary, there is still corruption in government circuits, the anomaly blooms in embarrassing but tidier proportions.

    Governors still pilfer and divert the oft unexplainable ‘Security Vote,’ to fulfil their vanities. Lawmakers still embezzle the illicit ‘Constituency Allowance’ they allocate to themselves, and local government chairmen still misappropriate remnants of allocations due to them, after large chunks of the funding has been embezzled by state governors.  

    Appointment into political offices is still fraught with maladies of nepotism, perjury, dirty politicking and other forms of corruption. Add these to poor infrastructure and declining standards of education and healthcare, and you have a perfect recipe for an uprising or protest-vote, if you like. About 10 million of registered voters, in a flagrant display of apathy, have refused to collect their voters’ cards.

    Many more have sworn to vote for Atiku and his People’s Democratic Party (PDP), in protest against Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) perceived below-average performance. Thus the social media pulsates as you read with bickering and vitriol for and against either candidate.

    At the backdrop of these shameful realities, the citizenry, mostly youth’s political illiteracy is embarrassingly far-flung and subsumed in sentimentality, that, the ruling class had to re-invent a political devil in the opposition, to exploit their ignorance and intolerance.

    The youth rant in new and traditional media, that they have been excluded from power, at the state and federal level yet they have populated Nigerian politics for 58 years as thugs, murderers, vote-sellers, rhetoricians and canon-fodder for mayhem.

    The altarpiece of their presence manifests in every political season, when the incumbent ruling class, comprising men and women, who previously identified as youth five to seven decades ago, deploy them as unthinking muscles, emissaries of death and destruction.

    Nigeria’s current dilemma is a consequence of choices and perversions of the incumbent ruling class, comprising government functionaries, their associates and godfathers – whose collective, pathological self-interest derailed a long train of progress, while exacerbating and ignoring existential threats.

    The ruling class’ sociopathic need for instant gratification pushed them to midwife equally sociopathic policies, causing them to fritter away an enormous inheritance, and when that was exhausted, to mortgage the future.

    Thus there is urgent need for Nigeria’s youth to coalesce into more definitive roles and forms and make informed choices. Since elder politicians, whom Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, aptly described as the ‘Wasted Generation’ have failed to grow up and make progressive choices for the nation, the onus rests on the youth to answer as the adults the ruling class never were.

    The PACT assemblage is already a failed enterprise; driven by greedy, selfish egomaniacs, the platform could not assume the prized role it ought to perform, leaving Nigeria once again at tethers end, and the brink of collapse.

    This calls for urgent, proactive steps by the youth. The first is to provide a foundation for unity of ideas and cause against the incumbent ruling class’ political agenda, and to do it very quickly.

    The second is to evolve a social agenda that strengthens the ideals of a common progress and commonwealth. It is not yet too late to undo ruling class malfeasance, but the deadline is fast approaching.

    At the moment, the predatory ruling class are regrouping into marauding, ruthless camps. In their political paradise, governors rule for two terms (eight years) and compensate themselves with outrageous pensions and senate seats.

    At the expiration of their eight-year tenure, outgoing governors, with unabashed arrogance, struggle to choose their successors, and other crucial public appointees. Some wage war to turn government into their family inheritance, thus their struggles to install their son-in-laws and siblings in government quarters.

    Ultimately, they seek to impose stooges as their successors. The latter are expected to cover up official fraud, embezzlement and other atrocities, that, they committed during their tenure.

    This is the result of junk politics, where nothing changes – meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices that institutionalise corruption and inefficiency in governance, according to Hedges.

    Junk politics “redefines traditional values, tilting courage toward bluster, sympathy toward mawkishness, humility toward self-disrespect, identification with ordinary citizens toward distrust of reason and intellect.

    At every turn, it seeks to obliterate voters’ consciousness of socio-economic and other differences in their midst, and it is the major indoctrination of Nigeria’s most prominent political parties.

    Its about time the youth established a platform, unlike PACT, where more humane aspirants foster politics as everything but a by-product of a diseased culture that seeks its purpose in characters, who are as Boorstin writes, “receptacles into which we pour our own purposelessness.”

     

     

  • Professor George Fola Esan @ 80

    How time flies! But to God be the glory as Professor Fola Esan, first Nigerian professor of Haematology turns 80 today. The academic trajectory of Professor Esan demonstrates the saying that morning shows the day as childhood shows manhood. Professor Esan’s formative years began in the famous Christ School Ado Ekiti under the tutelage of the English man Reverend Leslie Donald Mason who could recognize a genius whenever he met one. When the slightly and fragile young lad showed up in Christ’s School, the principal showed immediate interest and curiosity.

    Fola Esan came to Christ School as a young boy of only 12 years in age. This was remarkable at the time when many of his classmates were much older than him. He even beat by one year, his immediate elder brother, Benjamin, who later became the school’s senior prefect and head boy in 1956. His much older brother, Olanipekun who later became a professor of classics at the University of Ibadan did not attend Christ’s School but his younger sister,Abike in later years attended the same school. In other words, Christ’s School became a permanent fixture in the life and times of the Esans.He finished secondary school at the age of 17 which was a record in those days. This was at a time that it was not unheard of that some of the senior students already had children at home. What was more remarkable was the fact that he scored A grade in all his subjects. This was a manifestation of his unique cerebral endowment and not because the school had good teachers.

    Apart from Reverend Mason, the principal of the school, there were two or three graduates on the staff of the school including Chief Joseph Oduola Osuntokun who was to later go into full time politics. Science subjects were taught by non-graduates until about a year or so before Fola Esan took his final examinations in Christ School but this did not stop him performing excellently in the key science subjects that would be required for his medical education.The secret of any Christ School student’s success was hard work and belief in God. Prayers and fasting are important but God himself promised to bless the work of our hands .This was the case with Professor Esan.

    The home background was also important. The Esans took education seriously like most Ekiti people of his generation. Fola Esan’s father’s extended family of brothers, sisters and cousins gave encouragement to the children early in life. All the children went to church and school and they combined this with helping their parents on the farm during holidays. Ikoro their home town in the western part of Ekiti State was and is still favoured by good soil and flat land unlike the stony and hilly landscape of neighbouring towns and villages. The people combined the growing of cash crops like kolanuts and cocoa with food crops grown in all parts of Ekiti. The point to make is that the people were sufficiently prosperous to the point that they were able to send their children to school. Unlike most people of his generation, his parents were able to put all their children in school without much hassle. Going to Christ’s School then in 1951 was not too difficult.

    After his stellar performance in the Cambridge University Secondary School Overseas Examination, he had several options open to him like most young people of the time. He could have sought a scholarship to go abroad or join any of the commercial concerns in Nigeria and work his way to the top but he chose private study to prepare him for the concessional entrance examination to the only university inNigeria, the University of Ibadan. It was a fierce competition and almost a gamble to get in. He wanted to study medicine and had the examples of Adelola Adeloye and Kayode Osuntokun two old boys of Christ School to follow.

    The medical school was severely restricted to exceptionally brilliant people not only in Nigeria but to students from The Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast (later Ghana) and Nigeria. This meant the Nigerian quota was highly competitive. But the likes of Fola Esan had no problem in getting in. His example was followed by a host of Christ’s School old boys and by the time he graduated M.B, B.S in 1962, the path set by him and others became the trodden path for most students from Christ’s School into the University of Ibadan.

    Fola Esan followed his sterling performance in the college of medicine by heading for England to specialize in haematology, an important area in laboratory medicine. He has had further exposure and training in American universities.

    I ran into him in 1980 when he was on sabbatical at the University of San Francisco where he worked as a solitary researcher working away without airs but with absolute determination to make a mark wherever he went to in the western world. In 1964 while he was in England, he came to my rescue when, driven by more enthusiasm than wisdom, I lost my bearing in London.

    Since the 1960s, he has taught at the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan. He helped establish the sub speciality in haematology in the college where he rose to the full chair in haematology. As part of his public service to the nation, he was given field commission as a lieutenant-colonel in the Nigerian Army during the civil war in Nigeria and risked his life caring for the wounded on the war front .When he retired from the University of Ibadan, he helped develop the medical school at Ekiti State University. He was hampered by lack of resources and unnecessary pettiness in the university where people were envious of the special deference people paid to him. He has since joined the team helping AfeBabalola develop a modern medical school not humbled by severe lack of financialresources.

    He can look back and thank God for His great mercies and for the excellent health he has endowed him with. He has had the fortune of a slim physique without any excess fat. As a young man, he kept fit playing tennis but he has never been a health freak and with minimal self-effort,God has preserved him this long.

    As a slender child in Christ’s School, he was not known for athletics or football; he however did enough to keep fit. He ate very sparingly. I saw him do this in San Francisco to my absolute horror but as a physician he knows what is good for him. I have always admired Professor Esan as an old boy of my famous alma mater. When I entered Christ’s School in 1956, our teachers used to regale us of the incredible academic exceptionalism of Kayode Osuntokun and Fola Esan and challenged us to go and do likewise. We all tried but we were not good enough even though we too were not brain dead but the records of the two Christ School heroes remain. Professor Fola Esan is one of the brightest men that has ever lived in this our benighted country that pays little regard to academic excellence.

    This is wishing you sir, happy birthday day and I pray you remain on eagles wings.

  • Restructuring and warring vice presidents

    Blame not Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and former Vice President Abubakar Atiku who have been trying to outdo each other in the last two weeks selling different narratives of their exploits in the struggle for workable federal arrangement in Nigeria. Precisely because Nigerians hardly read anything about how we got to this sorry pass, very few, including our political representatives have been able to properly articulate our crisis of nation building.  This is perhaps the reason the warring former vice president and the incumbent are waging subliminal war to reposition themselves as the best that has ever happened to the struggle for federal arrangement which started in the 1940s, long before both were born, as 2019 draws near.

    As his own major contribution to the struggle for workable federal arrangement, Osinbajo regaled us with the now very familiar story of how Lagos State created 37 local councils;  how  former President Obasanjo, then Atiku’s boss and now his sponsor for his 2019 presidential bid, frustrated Lagos State efforts and how he fought it up to the Supreme Court. Besides fingering Atiku as an accomplice in his principal’s assault on Nigerian constitution, he thinks Atiku has limited knowledge of what restructuring is all about: “People talking about restructuring, if you ask them what they meant by restructuring, they won’t even know what it means and that is the problem we have to face”, he sneered.

    Atiku has also tried to equate his treachery and unsuccessful coup against the second term ambition of his principal, Obasanjo when he mobilized self-serving South-south governors to demand that littoral states of the federation be allowed to get more benefits from offshore proceeds as his own positive contribution to the struggle for restructuring of Nigeria in line with what was bequeathed on to us by our founding fathers.

    He is also taking credit for the six geopolitical zones structure that came up for discussion but not authored by the 1995 Abacha’s dubious constitutional confab. If Osinbajo is in doubt about Atiku’s grasp of what restructuring is about, he took pains to explain. It is according to him, to “return some items on the concurrent list to the states; to reverse the epidemic of federal take-over of state and voluntary organisations, schools and hospitals which began in the 1970s” under Obasanjo his principal; transferring of federal roads to the state governments along with the resources it expends on them; devolving more powers to the federating units with the accompanying resources and ensuring greater control by the federating units of the resources in their areas. All these which both PDP and APC have been unable to accomplish in 19 years, he said ‘can be done in six months.’

    First, I sympathise with both warring leaders who suffer from the same affliction. Their principals, Obasanjo and Buhari, as former soldiers who believe they not only own the state, but are custodians of the constitution, see any discussion of restructuring as a threat to the unity of Nigeria they both fought to preserve.

    It is also not difficult to conclude the warring former vice presidents are playing on the intelligence of Nigerians. Osinbajo , a professor of law, a former Attorney General of Lagos and an active participant in the drafting of APC manifesto which featured restructuring of the country as part of its selling point in 2015 and Atiku, with a diploma in law from ABU and a vice president for eight years, cannot pretend not to know what Nigerians want.

    A return to a pre-independence federal arrangement has been widely canvassed by many credible and patriotic Nigerians across the country as well as Afenifere, Ohaneze, the Middle Belt Forum, and many others as representatives of their ethnic groups.

    Nigerians agitating for restructuring are not asking both men and the unambitious Nigerian governing elite to invent the wheel. They are only asking for a return to a federal arrangement embraced by our founding fathers which up to 1966 guaranteed ‘individual and group rights defined in form of language, culture, and religion or socio-economic status’ and guarantee freedom, liberty and equality for every group. This was a battle long fought and won by our founding fathers.

    Because of the nature of state formation in Africa, the colonial powers impressed it on us that the ‘Hausas of Zaria are different from the Bantu tribes men of the valley of the Benue’ just as the Scandinavians in the Baltic are different from the Slavs of Bulgaria; that we are a ‘collection of mutually independent native states, separated by difference of history and tradition, by ethnological and racial, tribal, political, social and religious barriers’.

    Consequently, Hugh Clifford, the then Nigerian Governor-General in an address to the Nigerian Council on December 1920 was unequivocal about a British policy designed to produce a ‘regional government that secures for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and its nationality and its own chosen form of government which have been evolved for it by the wisdom and by the accumulated experiences of generation of its forbearers’.   This stated policy was what later influenced the constitutional changes of 1954, 1957 and the 1958 Lancashire debate at which October 1, 1960 was chosen as the date for our independence.

    As opposed to the military that has dominated Nigerian politics since 1966, their civilian accomplices benefitting from our current tragedy and the warring vice presidents trying to play the ostrich, what true lovers of our country pray for is a restructured Nigeria with constituents power over law and order, education and public information; a restructured Nigeria that guarantees freedom and justice for all;  that protects the right of indigenes as enshrined in the UN charter; a restructured Nigeria that can end the orgy of killing of defenceless  women and children in the Middle Belt region by unidentified suspected immigrants herdsmen from across West Africa‘, and a restructured country that will guarantee each constituent has the capacity to protect its citizens from killer fake drugs and other substandard goods imported by evil minded Nigerians.

    There is a consensus on the above demand by Nigerian opinion leaders and various leading socio-cultural groups. Chief EmekaAnyaoku, a former secretary-general of the Commonwealth, captured this when he said ‘the present   36 federating units and the federal capital territory, each with its full paraphernalia of administration, spending disproportionate amount of its resources on recurrent expenditure’, is responsible for the collapse of education and health sectors and infrastructural decay’. The most appropriate structure of governance for Nigeria, according to him should be a return to a ‘true federation of six federating units with each developing at its own pace, and the proceeds from “God-given” national resources’.

    Except warring Osinbajo and Atiku who are trying to play the ostrich and their principals – President Buhari and ex-President Obasanjo, there is no ambiguity in what Nigeria want and demand of their leaders.

  • Buhari, Atiku and Bukar Ibrahim’s prognosis

    The distinguished three-term senator and former governor of Yobe State  has just tasted what has been the undeserved lot of our patriotic and honest politicians, who are always being “misquoted” or “quoted out of context” or “misrepresented” or “lied against”.

    The culprits?

    Who else but those unscrupulous fellows who hide under various shadowy nomenclatures, such as public affairs analysts, social critics, rights activists, commentators  and  others to lash selfless  people who have chosen to serve us all, putting their personal comfort at great risk.

    At the presentation of his book, “Poorlitics” in Abuja, Ibrahim was quoted as saying that the All Progressives Congress (APC) could lose next year’s elections in the Northeast for poor performance. “Things have not changed and many things are getting worse and the people are bitter. We should not assume that we can win, even with massive rigging,” he is reported to have said.

    “The economy has gone down because of our action and inaction and we are blaming the past too much rather than solving the present problems. I am going to give a dire warning. Let the Northeast not be taken for granted that we must support APC.”

    He warned that if APC failed to do the right thing, the Northeast would have no option but to vote for any of the other candidates, including Atiku Abubakar, who is from the Northeast state of Adamawa, and is flying the flag of the PDP. “I still reserve the capacity to ask my people to go our separate way,” Ibrahim threatened.

    The next day’s dailies were screaming: “Buhari faces imminent defeat in Northeast”; “Buhari risks defeat…”; “Rigging won’t make APC win in 2019″ ; “We may not beat PDP even with rigging”; and more.

    The senator came under attack. Understandably so.  He was savaged by Buhari’s supporters as an ingrate for lampooning in public a government that, according to his traducers, has been so good to him. Some said he had been a senator thrice after being a governor twice and his wife is a minister. What else does he want?

    Others, who are obviously his bitter political rivals, said: Is Bukar Ibrahim now a critic? Is he broke? Is this what losing a ticket to return to the Senate for the fourth time can do to a decent man? Isn’t this ingratitude? Is he not part of the Senate that has behaved as if it was set up to eviscerate the Executive? What is his evidence for his bleak prognosis? How objective?

    These, I am glad to report, are some of the charitable views of the moderate critics of the senator’s innocent views. The others went overboard, alluding to extraneous and stale matters.

    Ibrahim fought back. He said he never said all those things being ascribed to him and that he remained a Buhari man for life. Were his traducers convinced? No. Not all. In fact, they seemed to have been more energised by his denial.

    Suddenly, the forgotten matter of the distinguished senator seen apparently frolicking with two women in an unnamed hotel was excavated. Nigerians love salacious stories, especially when such stories have to do with some prominent person’s perceived concupiscence or sexual infidelity. Now, they are all talking about that video, laughing and yelling excitedly. This being a family newspaper, I won’t go into the details of the short video. Neither will I talk about the various lewd remarks it generated. Definitely, not the stuff for reading at breakfast.

    They called Ibrahim names. A strictly private matter conceived in the inner recess of an unknown hotel became the subject of a case before a jury; talk about the mob as a jury. They slandered him. Even those believed to be unworthy critics were eager to cast the first stone.

    Why should a man who has three wives be found with two women at a time? Sexual perversion? they asked. Avarice? Where did he get the energy from? Who filmed the show? Who are these women? Are they single or married? Don’t they have shame? Are they professionals? Will Ibrahim’s wives forgive him?

    The whole thing was not really clear, as in all matters involving politicians. These, at any rate, are the questions many were asking. It is, however, to be noted that Ibrahim did not lift a finger against the purveyors of the scandalous rumour. He simply dismissed it all as pure envy by a jobless lot. “These are two consenting adults; I didn’t force them. So, why the noise? Are the women complaining?” he was quoted as saying.

    Needless to say, that was the end of the matter. The distraction over, the senator returned to his job – making laws for the wellbeing of the society. So much for a much misunderstood senator.

    Details of the information filed at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by presidential aspirants – we have an army of them-  have sparked a huge debate. Atiku, whom nobody has ever accused of lying – they say he is corrupt, without any proof whatsoever – has been fending off attacks over his income and tax returns. He says he earned N60. 2m in three years and paid N10.8m tax.

    The popular thinking is that Atiku, with his famed wealth, should have earned more than N60.2m and paid more than N10.8m tax. His supporters have risen to his defence. They accuse his opponents of trying to set the taxman after the PDP candidate, force him to turn in the cash that would have gone  into his campaign funds, leave him almost totally bare financially and render him vulnerable to a rout by his opponents.

    Some say his personal earnings should be separated from his companies’ haul. Others insist that since he is threatening to fight corruption if voted in, he must come clean on his earnings. Otherwise, say the critics, what will he say when corruption fights back as it does nowadays? They say his American University enlists only students whose parents can shell out a fortune as fees, listing his other ventures.

    Yet, there are those who think sincerely that Atiku need not bother about all this, their logic being that should he disclose his real and verifiable earnings, many of those poor people he has been helping would faint. Some sense, I dare say.

    Instead of explaining the income and tax matter, Atiku’s supporters have latched onto the old issue of the President’s academic papers. Buhari insists the papers are with the military. Instead of just strolling down the road into the Defence Headquarters in Abuja to demand that the papers be released for public viewing, they say the President should be disqualified. Is INEC complaining?

    Oby Ezekwesili has been threatening to win the presidential race. The candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN) has confounded her strategists with an open disclosure of how she would win. She says she will leverage on her being the most qualified of the scores of candidates eyeing the trophy. She describes APC and PDP as “Siamese twins of failure and destruction”.

    Nobody, besides those who advise her to note that politics is different from activism and those claiming that she was part of the PDP’s rapacious years, has bothered to reply the former minister. Isn’t the co-convener of the #BringBackOurGirls  a serious contender who should not just be ignored?

     

    Elizabeth Ogbaje Ochanya’s fate

    Her story could melt a heart of stone. Young, healthy and full of dreams like the kid next door, she must have been looking forward to a good family life after schooling. Then fate supervened in a fatal way. Her mum died and she had to live with her cousin whose husband and son – what an evil pair – took turns to rape her. She was their sex toy for five years. Complications set in. She was hospitalised. Doctors fought valiantly to save her. No luck. She died.

    The late Elizabeth
    The late Elizabeth

    Elizabeth Ogbanje Ochanya died. She was 13; just 13. An innocent child. Makurdi streets were throbbing on Tuesday with students marching to demand justice for the poor girl.

    On trial are her uncle, Andrew Ogbuja, 52, a Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo teacher and his son, Victor Ogbuaja, who allegedly drugged, molested, abused and raped the JSS 2 pupil of the Federal Government Girls’ College, Gboko, Benue State.

    It is still not clear why the Ogbuajas visited such savagery on a little girl they must have promised to love and adore after her mum’s death. Mental instability? Sheer wickedness? Crass impunity? Lack of values? The court will surely find out. These, after all, are allegations.

    There may be many Elizabeths out there who are scared of telling their stories. They should be encouraged to talk before it is too late. May Elizabeth’s soul find  with The Creator the peace she was denied here for no reason.

  • This PACT of minors and foetal adults (2)

    As you read, Nigeria grapples with the swell of young aspirants. In the latter, desire sprouts with seductive dissonance of savagery and surrender.

    Passion in the young aspirant is armoured by greed, hypocrisy and a fever of entitlement. But like the bestial ruling class they seek to replace, Nigeria’s young aspirants are unwise, inhumane and maddened by lust. You see it play out in their utterances, conduct and public presentations.

    This explains the failure of the PACT assemblage. A disenchanted aspirant and member of the group, blames its ill-fated endeavour on members’ selfishness and impatience to take over power.

    Driven by immoderate lust and an exaggerated sense of self-worth, each presidential aspirant in the group, expected his rivals to “step down” and choose him as a consensus candidate. Eventually, the group picked a consensus candidate who reportedly lost the presidential primaries in his party. Shame.

    There is no gainsaying PACT suffers the affliction of the covetous, a conflict between definitiveness and dissolution of self – which is amusingly, the plague of the incumbent ruling class. Within the group and among the country’s young aspirants, passion assumes a dangerous freedom, and they engage in its pursuit at all cost.

    Some wily, crooked breed, scurry for the mandate of old plundering parties, even as they seek the blessings of familiar monsters, or godfathers, if you like.

    This band of aspirants believe, that, by presenting their necks to the leash of supercilious godfathers, their victories are assured at the polls.

    They understand that the most essential skill in political theatre is artifice. Hence they apprentice themselves to established criminal masterminds and godfathers to realise their ambition.

    A different monstrosity, however, subsists in self-appointed revolutionaries cum liberators of a Nigeria presumably shackled to the whims of plundering godfathers, desperate cults and cabals.

    These new kids on the block seek Nigerians’ mandate to lead via characterless, diminutive political parties and fashionable platforms like PACT.

    Ultimately, they exploit a banal theory of rage and aggression, anticipating and out-stepping the ruling class to match it filth for filth, rage for rage, rhetoric for rhetoric, while professing righteous indignation at the latter’s inactions.

    In truth, the passion of the PACT assemblage is similar to the incumbent ruling class’ aggressive forging; the theme is similar with the latter’s, where endless bickering, platitudinous rant, vote-buying, bloody violence, and premeditated murder mar proceedings.

    Had PACT kicked off from its disgraceful start, it would eventually assume barbarism hitherto peculiar to Nigeria’s most powerful, prominent parties.

    Its members’ presumed sophistication and intelligence, oft touted as PACT’s unique selling proposition (USP) will dull to the maul of its duplicity and ethical quandary.

    To establish and sustain its integrity, PACT suspended itself in ideological voyeurism and fault-finding, a tactic of assault and defence, that, eventually became its perversion and tomb.

    As PACT buries itself in bitter mummiform, Nigerians, the youth especially, will do right by consigning the platform and hopes it stoked in them, beneath the political thrash pile, where it shares space with the country’s rudderless political parties.

    The PACT disaster is hardly astonishing, however; the platform and its members, if elected, would eventually play into a stereotype – better they dash our hopes now than later.

    The history of the Nigerian youth on the corridors of power leaves much to be desired. Salisu Buhari became Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives before his 30th birthday although he claimed 36 at the period. He was eventually impeached for certificate forgery and later granted pardon by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Dimeji Bankole was just 37 years of age when he became House Speaker, in a tenure that was marred by corruption scandals and police detention.

    Now 44, Dino Melaye, became lawmaker 11 years ago at age 33. The controversial lawmaker and ‘Ajekun Iya’ crooner, attained notoriety for his boastfulness, incomprehensible display of his wealth on social media, and excessive tantrums.

    Uninspiring Kogi governor, Yahaya Bello, assumed office at 41 and lawmaker, Farouk Lawan, was in his 40s when he attained bad press for allegedly soliciting bribe from Femi Otedola, a businessman.

    Lest we forget the theatrics and tantrums of Ayodele Fayose, former Ekiti governor; Nigeria will not forget the wild antics of Fayose in a hurry. Now 57, the latter was undoubtedly young when he became Ekiti governor on May 29, 2003.

    The jury is forever out on the quality of leadership offered by the aforementioned as public officers, yet, whenever, a young person is elected as President, or into public office in other parts of the world, young Nigerians erupt in a frenzy, afflicting the social media with righteous rage, and chanting the We-Are-Not-Too-Young-To-Run refrain, often tiresomely.

    Truth and patriotism symbolise our preferred aspirant, we expect these qualities from heroes hence the widespread clamour for younger aspirants.

    We have seen such passion erupt in the French as they elected 39-year-old President Emmanuel Macron; in the Canadians as they elected 46-year-old Justin Trudeau.

    Today, we see it romanticised by Nigeria’s youths even as they serve as ultimate impediments to its attainment. The Nigerian youth seeks to take over power from a ruling class that recruits them as thugs to disrupt elections, maim, kill and scuttle the ambition of promising young aspirants.

    The same generation of youths make a living as social media hooligans (e-rats), whose job is to hoodwink, bully, spread falsehood and thwart the ambition of young aspirants and promising change-makers, as you read.

    The same band of youth will retire to rant, on their digital devices, and as paid protesters, about the youth’s urgent desire and right to take over power from the predatory ruling class. Their only argument is that, they are Nigerians, in their youth.

  • The shape of the coming Senate

    Even before the 8th Senate calls it a day, many have begun to imagine the shape of its successor. Isn’t this too early?

    Not really. The parties have named their presidential candidates. The focus has naturally shifted to the other aspirants. Among those struggling for senatorial seats are governors and presidential wannabes. So many are the governors heading for the Senate that the Upper Chamber has been branded a rehabilitation centre.

    Those who hold this opinion have been asking: Is the Senate part of the governors’ huge retirement package? Are there no other worthy hands for the job? Must governors remain in government ad infinitum? Are these genuine patriots or politicians whose ambitions are driven by sheer avarice? Are they scared that the verdict of history will be harsh on them, hence the need to seek a reprieve in the Senate? Senator Shehu Sani gave the game away when he revealed that a senator carts home monthly N13.2million in allowances. The salary of a senator remains one of the best-kept secrets of our public life. So, is it the allure of lucre?

    What is clear is that the Senate still holds a seductive attraction for politicians. Incidentally, some prominent senators won’t be returning.  Senator Benedict Murray-Bruce (Bayelsa East), the passionate apostle of the comical – sorry, a slip there – “common sense revolution” will be sorely missed. His occasional controversial interventions, such as when he advised Osun State to pay salaries even as his home state Bayelsa was owing arrears of workers’ salaries and entitlements, will be missed.

    The distinguished senator has since moved on, joining the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation.

    Senator Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central) has dumped the All Progressives Congress (APC) after losing the ticket in controversial circumstances. It would have been a miracle if Sani had grabbed the ticket, despite his perceived close relationship with President Buhari. Governor Nasir El-Rufai and Sani have not been the best of friends. The governor is seen to be proud, garrulous, tempestuous and ruthless in his vindictiveness. Some have even called him violent, citing the demolition of the property of those who disagree with him as a reflection of his recklessness. But his friends claim El-Rufai is a good man.

    As I was saying, Sani has quit the APC and declared for the PRP, which traces its roots to Malam Aminu Kano, champion of the talakawa.  If he runs, the same forces that ran him out of APC may run him out of the race. In other words, the senator’s political future is hanging in the balance.

    Senator Suleiman Othman Hunkuyi (Kaduna North) lost his battle for the PDP ticket after he fell out with El-Rufai – the governor takes no prisoners – and left the APC. In the heat of the collision with El-Rufai, the governor, at dawn, led a team of experts to demolish his property for lack of some documentation. Hunkuyi is not likely to return to the Upper Chamber.

    Senator Dino Melaye (PDP) and Senator Smart Adeyemi (APC) will be slugging it out. What a rich choice for the good people of Kogi West! Adeyemi, former president of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), was actually displaced by Melaye in the 2015 election. He was no bench warmer and his contributions were well delivered – with logic and facts. Theatrical Melaye will be parading a solid record of distractions at plenary, childish stunts, immodesty in conduct and foul language that all seem to come to him so naturally.

    Who will carry the day?

    Patrick “Igodomigodo” Obahiagbon  – I am sure you remember him, the former member of the House of Representatives- has secured the Edo South Senatorial District ticket of the APC. While in the House, he enlivened discussions with his hilarious presentation. His grandiloquence was unmatched as he indulged in verbosity and deployed unfamiliar words to make his point. But the entertainment value of his contributions reverberated across the land.

    Obahiagbon secured the ticket in a dramatic manner. He and two others knelt down like schoolboys before an angry headmaster, grovelling in the full glare of a crowd of delegates at the convention to pick the flag bearer. The photograph went viral on the Internet. Many were shocked that the former Chief of Staff to the Governor could stoop that low. Yes; he did. Did he not conquer?

    Since Obahiagbon got the ticket, many have been recalling his numerous comments on the polity. Among such comments is the one he made on the controversy surrounding the planned fuel subsidy removal by the Goodluck Jonathan Administration.

    He said: “I have read with acatalectic disgust government’s asinine and puerile ratiocinations attempting to justiceate the proposed removal of subsidies from petroleum products. It has asseverated that its intentions is guided by the need to checkmate the odoriferous excesses of a Machiavellian and Mephistophelean cabal and I have said to myself, what a shame. What a self-indicting admittal of failure of governance. What an hocus pocus!”

    And this on varsity teachers’ strike: “The ASUU strike is a miasma of a despicable apotheosis of an hemorrhaging plutocracy, cascadingly oozing into a malodorous excrescence of mobocracy. With all termagant ossifying proclivities of a kakistocracy, our knowledgia centura is enveloped in a paraphlegic crinkum crankum. Therefore ASUU, cest in dejavu, dejavu peret ologomabia.”

    Should Obahiagbon find his way into the Senate, it will not be out of place to say that the House’s loss is the Senate’s gain.

    After helping the PDP to conquer Ekiti State in the 2014 election, nothing much was heard of businessman Chris Uba. Now he has asked his brother Andy Uba, a senator, to drop his planned return to the Upper Chamber because he has been there for eight years.

    “It is now my turn,” Uba said, adding: “I want him to throw in the towel because the fight is going to be very serious.”

    All ye scorned godfathers, rejoice; your reward is here. The godfather of Anambra politics has elected to fight your battle. He told reporters: “I want to run because we have been sponsoring politicians in Anambra State and across Nigeria. I have been doing that and a lot of people have passed through my school.

    “But they call us godfathers. We have made case several times for the party to make some provisions in the party’s constitution to protect godfathers, but no way, no provision… .

    “After sponsoring politicians, immediately they get to Abuja, you can’t get them on the telephone again, nobody will see them again; they buy choice cars and the next thing they will blackmail you. Little thing, they will start fighting you; they will say they know the President, they’ve known the party chairman and as a godfather, you are in trouble. So now we need to occupy offices to protect our position and the positions of our people. That is why I am running.”

    If Uba wins, he will be representing the good people of Anambra South.

    Abba Moro won the PDP ticket for Benue South. Moro is the dutiful former Interior minister under whose watch the Nigeria Immigration Service conducted a recruitment in which more than 100 young men and women died. It is not immediately clear if Moro is holding the ticket in trust for former Senate President David Mark, who joined the race for the PDP’s presidential ticket and came last in a field of eight contestants.

    All in all, the 9th Senate promises to be an exciting assemblage of very interesting politicians.

     

    As Nnamdi Kanu shows up

    The riddle of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu’s sudden disappearance about one year ago has been resolved – somehow. A video of the separatist group leader performing some religious obligation in Jerusalem —the Israelis deny he is with them —was quickly followed by a broadcast to his followers.

    Kanu spoke of Nigeria in unpleasant terms and derided the court before which he is standing trial. He has the right to his opinion about Nigeria and his advocacy for Biafra. But then, is foul language part of the ingredients of the kind of revolution the IBOP chief is preaching?

    Those who claim without any proof whatsoever that Kanu was being held by the military – some even said he had been killed – can now see their folly. They have been deceived. Not so those who have had to face the grim reality of the fire that Kanu’s misbegotten adventure sparked.

    What happens to those who lost their loved ones in those bloody protests over a matter that dialogue could have resolved? How about businesses that lost  fortunes in the temporary anarchy loosed on some parts of the Southeast by Kanu’s misguided actions? Who will compensate them?  Will those who stood surety for Kanu produce him in court?

    No matter how strong his belief in Biafra is, Kanu and his supporters should realise that force will not give them the prize; dialogue can.

    Enough of the bloodshed that accompanies this kind of dream. Enough.

  • NHIS as symptom of dysfunctional federation

    On October 18, the chairman of NHIS governing council, Dr.EnyantuIfenne, announced the suspension of Professor Usman Yusuf, the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). She also announced the decision of the council to raise an administrative panel of enquiry to probe the allegations levelled against Yusuf by workers and establish the truth or otherwise of the claims. These allegations according to newspapers reports include “highhandedness. misappropriation of funds, nepotism, misconduct, flagrant disregard for  superior authority and use of inappropriate words on a senior officer; others include encouragement of the supply of fake products and substandard goods to the agency, inflation of cost of contract by over 100 percent, dropping of the name of President Buhari for disobedience of the minister of health, fraudulent practice in the selection of insurance broker for the scheme and collection of a flat rate of N7.2 million for registration of Health Management Organisations, (HMOs). He was also accused of mismanaging N860 million budgeted by the agency for training in 2016.”

    But for Yusuf, it was corruption fighting back. He alleged there was high level of corruption in the NHIS’s Information Communications Technology (ICT) department, which allegedly fraudulently enrolled up to 23,000 people into the scheme. He also claimed 57 HMOs in the country have no valid licenses, as their accreditation had expired.

    He had the sympathy of the National Assembly lawmakers who directed the minister to allow the suspended secretary to “continue with his sanitisation programme in the NHIS”. Following a motion sponsored by Chika Okafor and 34 lawmakers at a plenary presided over by Speaker Yakubu Dogara, the House of Representatives ordered the recall of Prof. Usman Yusuf. The committee also claimed “it was aware that the minister wrote to the Executive Secretary, through the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. BintaAdamu Bello, to pay N197, 072,500 for the rehabilitation of some federal medical centres, in a contract awarded by the ministry in 2016 even when there was no budgetary provision for the payment in the NHIS’s 2016 budget.” The house also alleged that the permanent secretary had in another letter asked Yusuf to pay $37,838 to six officials of the ministry to attend a World Health Organisation conference in Geneva.”

    Some sources claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari ordered Yusuf’s reinstatement because he found the allegations against him largely unsubstantiated after evaluating the report of the panel that probed the offences. The minister for information told the nation that “the fact that he has been reinstated does not mean that the EFCC will not continue with its investigation”. The outcome of the EFCC investigation was never made public.

    But employees of NHIS along with those of Joint Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (JASCSN) and the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN) saw Yusuf’s recall as an indictment of federal government’s corruption fight”.

    Suspending him again last week, the second time in eight months, Dr.Ifenne announced “if President Buhari is fully briefed about a tenth of Yusuf’s atrocities, he would throw him out! The truth, like health, has no colour, no tribe and no religion and no social class. The council stands by its decision.”

    There were newspaper reports that Yusuf forced his way back to his office on Monday this week.

    We have no reason to doubt either Ifenne and her council nor the embattled Professor Yusuf Usman. Let us also concede it to employees of NHIS, JASCSON, and MHWUN that now believes it is their right to determine who their employer employs. Of course we already know the president who suffers from a sense of self-righteousness is hardly swayed by public opinion. We can similarly not question the media owned by those who own society for doing what they do best-raising more questions than providing information to the public. Let us therefore assume they are all right since using the Maina scandal as a template, it is difficult to make sense out of actions of government that hardly talk to the people, even when it is in its interest to do so.

    But the president and his warring appointees are not the real issue. They are mere symptoms of a dysfunctional unitary system fraudulently described as federalism by those who are benefitting from our tragedy.

    For instance, NHIS is a brain child of ‘mainstreamers’. It is part of social engineering efforts of those who continue to play the ostrich instead of addressing our crisis of nation. Obasanjo who took over regional world class universities and university teaching hospitals which later became shadows of themselves officially launched the NHIS in 2005 with a mandate to enlist at least 70 per cent of Nigerians by the end of 2010. Today it covers only about 4%. As in most federal institutions, the programme enrolees experience poor service delivery. The scheme presently covered those in the civil service, the armed forces, paramilitary forces and other employees of the federal government. Since it is voluntary, only few private sector concerns such as banks participate. Of course the underprivileged majority, the destitute and children who are the most vulnerable and the target of such schemes in other societies are not covered. NHIS even with its control of more funds than it needed has been largely ineffective because of massive corruption. There have been reported cases “of collusion between agents of the regulatory body, the health care providers and health maintenance organizations”.

    In other words, the “unitary federalists”, the ‘mainstreamers’ that want to control the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the roads we pass through, our health, culture and history, cannot manage a scheme that covers only 4% of the population.

    Now let us go through memory to remind ‘mainstreamers’ and enemies of a restructured Nigeria that we once had a western regional government healthcare system that worked for the people between 1952 and 1966. Within that scheme, government provided dispensaries in every village and hamlet, manned by trained health assistants and midwives. They were often opened to school children between 8-10am after which they attended to others that needed medical attention in the community. But mainstreamers have dragged the west down from where it was in the fifties to the same level of Jos south LGA located in the outskirts of Jos city where 80% of women deliver their babies unassisted at their homes while one of their former governors shared out fifty pounds note to strangers in London.

    Today, Nigeria has the second highest maternal deaths in the world second only to India. “An estimated 830 women die from avoidable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth every day and about 58,000 death annually.” “With the new-born mortality rate of 29 deaths per 1,000 births, the global estimates rank Nigeria as the 11th highest on new-born deaths. This is partly because corruption marred the federal government’s rural community health programme initiative since the beginning of the fourth republic in 1999.

    Professor Adewole, the minister of health was once the provost of UCH, once acclaimed as one of the best three teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth of Nations which include Britain, Canada, Australia and India.  Today the UCH is a shadow of itself. LUTH is not any different. Sometimes patients wait as long as five months to see consultants. The minister who seems to be busy doing everything except finding a way to ensure 96% of Nigerian not covered by their NHIS get some joy was recently heard saying during a national television programme that our underfunded and ill-equipped federal teaching hospitals have too many consultants.

    Our problem is the dysfunctional centre. If after 50 years we do not know where we are going, we should at least be conscious of where we are coming from.

  • Akinkugbe: Hanging stethoscope after 60 years of medical practice

    I first met the then young Dr Ladipo Akinkugbe in 1962, 56 years ago when he came to give a lecture on water borne diseases to students of Ibadan Grammar School during my Higher School Certificate course. My alma mater Christ’s school Ado Ekiti did not have HSC in Arts subjects then. Even some of my very brilliant colleagues in the sciences preferred to have different experience than the one we had in Christ’s School by going to such schools as Ibadan Grammar School, Oyo Baptist College and Government College Ibadan Abeokuta Grammar School etc. But quite a number swotted for the concessional entrance examination to the University of Ibadan rather than going through the circuitous route of the Advanced Level examination.
    Akinkugbe comes from a patrician family of the Akinkugbe/Ladapo lineage in Ode-Ondo. By the way the only other place prefaced with “Ode” in Nigeria is Ode-Itshekiri or “big Warri” without going too much into history the people of the two places are linguistically related. Akinkugbe after his primary school in Ondo went to Government College Ibadan which distinguished itself by offering British type “public school” kind of education. Unlike Barewa College in the northern part of the country, its students intakes were usually the best selected after rigorous examination process. My brother, Edward Abiodun was a senior to Akinkugbe in Government College. One of Akinkugbe’s classmates was the Nobel laureate for literature Wole Soyinka (W.S). I must say if Akinkugbe had not studied medicine, he too would have made a mark in English literature judging from his mastery of the English language. One just has to listen or read his public lectures and auto biography “Footprints and Footnotes” to see the erudition that is native to the man.
    Akinkugbe belonged to the class of medical students at the University of Ibadan who had to leave Nigeria to go to London University College to finish their clinical studies before graduating M.B. B.S. (London). Those who came after him to Ibadan which by then had one of the best teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth, the UCH, finished their medical education in Ibadan but continued to get degrees of London University until 1964 when the University of Ibadan regrettably severed its ties with the University of London. I was at the University of Ibadan at that time and many of the students who started earning degrees of Ibadan after 1964 were not very happy with being denied London degrees. Would we have lost anything if we had maintained academic ties with the University of London? The modern trend in higher education nowadays is that the great universities of the world viz Harvard, Yale, Oxford , Cambridge, London, University of California at Berkeley etc. are establishing overseas campuses in the Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore and China to offer opportunity for students overseas for their brand of quality education.
    After graduating, Akinkugbe went to Oxford for advanced clinical studies earning a Ph.D. (Oxon) in the process. Fortified with this and membership of the Royal College of Physicians, Akinkugbe joined the teaching staff of the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan. He rapidly rose through the ranks becoming a professor and dean of the faculty in his thirties. His rise to the top has been simply meteoric. During the expansion of tertiary institutions in Nigeria during the 1970s, he was asked to build initially a university college in Ilorin like the University of Ibadan, Jos campus established in 1971. He had hardly settled down there and laid out his plans when he was asked by the federal government to become the vice chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, the bastion of northern Nigerian nationalism rooted in resentment of southern Nigeria’s advancement in western education. The Obasanjo/Muhammed military government at that time in the late 1970s was driven by some kind of nationalist fervor and thought it could unify the country by making the nation’s elite work in areas far away from their ethnic homeland. For example, Professor Agodi Onwumechili was appointed vice chancellor of the University of Ife, J. C. Ezeilo was appointed vice chancellor of Bayero University, Kano and Umaru Shehu was appointed vice chancellor, University of Nigeria Nsukka. The experiment in nation-building nearly ended in tragedy for Akinkugbe and Ezeilo who had to be spirited out of Zaria and Kano following students and staff rebellion against them on the grounds of their ethnic and religious differences. If left alone in Ibadan, Akinkugbe would have adorned the vice chancellorship of the University of Ibadan with erudition, scholarship and refinement. He has however since his adventure in Zaria been called upon to chair as pro-chancellor, the governing councils of one or two universities in the country. He is currently the pro-chancellor of Ondo State University of Medical Sciences, a controversial university established by Governor Segun Mimiko on the eve of the end of his eight year term as governor. This university is obviously a sop to the people of Ondo town who were complaining that their native son did nothing for their town in eight years. It will be a miracle if the university survives despite the awesome presence of Akinkugbe on its board. Ondo State before the establishment of the University of Medical Sciences still housed in Adeyemi College of Education, had two universities in Akungba and Okitipupa which were inadequately funded. It is a moot question whether what Ondo town needed was a university as a symbol of development. A functioning potable water scheme, regular electricity supply, good primary and secondary technical college and establishment of small scale industries and assistance to farmers and traders would have been money better utilized.
    Akinkugbe of course could not have stopped the governor from establishing his pet project of a university.
    The Ibadan Hypertension Centre which Akinkugbe established and ran with his own funds is unfortunately closing down as the medical titan reaches 85. It is a pity that the government of Oyo or the federation cannot take over the centre and run it as a referral centre or as an adjunct to the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital. Probably 50 percent of us Nigerians are hypertensive. This disease is a secret killer the management of which our governments have paid little attention. Akinkugbe on his own has pointed the way that we should go. It is a pity that our over politicized country pays little regard to things that are worthy and deserving of attention and emphasis.
    Akinkugbe has paid his dues to Nigeria and to humanity. He has definitely earned his epaulettes as a distinguished professor of medicine. A grateful nation has accorded him the highest honour of the NNMA. He has been involved with credit the development of higher education in Nigeria. His advice may not have been listened to all the time by those in power but his contributions are on record and history will be kind to him. Sixty years of medical practice is worth celebrating. Kudos to you sir.

  • This PACT of minors and foetal adults…

    The ‘young’ presidential candidate illustrates a fable. He is political Nigeria’s novel personae. He is “Not Too Young To Run” for any elective post hence his time has come to upset the oligarchic wagon.

    His cult runs where dissent rebounds. But alas! He speaks from both sides of the mouth. His passion for power translates to gibberish whatever his platform; since he knocks sweetened banality against the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC) and its arch rival, People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’s washed-out bromides, he hovers under an interpretative cloud.

    Like a changeling of fickle principles, passion and integrity are changeful in his wake. Call him androgyne. He is luminously masculine yet feminine, but ascribing femininity to his weaknesses disparages the female gender; for there are women imbued with unimpeachable acumen, courage, character and depth – pivotal traits he doesn’t possess.

    Chanting the ‘Not Too Young To Run’ anthem, he wears naivete like a badge, and brandishes ebullience as replacement for substance.

    His enthusiasm reached tipping point as President Muhammadu Buhari signed the ‘Not Too Young To Run’ Bill into law on May 31, this year.

    There was a rush of excitement and hope among the youths as the country amended sections of the constitution that hitherto inhibited youth under the age of 40 and 35 to vie for the presidency and governorship positions respectively.

    President Buhari, seeking to cash in on the buzz, invited members of the Not Too Young To Run Group (NTYTRG) to witness his endorsement of the bill. Samson Itodo, NTYTRG leader, commended Buhari and feeding on the hype, young aspirants emerged on the political scene, to vie for Nigeria’s presidency, governorship and other crucial posts.

    Eventually, they united under the aegis of Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT), to choose a consensus candidate from within their ranks, to counter the influence and spending power of the rapacious ruling class.

    The assemblage of supposedly intelligent, vibrant youths vowed to make PACT a platform on which the best and most acceptable aspirants, are backed by all to fly the youth’s presidential flag in 2019, against the might of Nigeria’s unwieldy, conflict-ridden, behemoth parties.

    The PACT arrangement, however, crumbled as the young aspirants bickered and whined like clueless youngsters over a kite. Selfishness, greed and immaturity hampered their bid to gift Nigeria with what could have been an inspiring team of bright, spirited candidates or a semblance of it. Some of the aspirants eventually distanced themselves from the arrangement and the choice of a consensus candidate.

    Sadly, PACT, by its shenanigans, fulfilled a dark prophecy of its untimely demise, few hours after it’s birth.

    At its emergence, PACT paraded smooth-talking candidates with charismatic profiles – most of whom flaunted exaggerated sense of self-worth. Extravagant sections of the press called them titans. But they are no titans. They are simply merchants of rot, who united to clothe dross as gold and filth in newer, fanciful packs.

    The group fell to the cravings of desperate youth with unbridled lust. Soon after they spoke in brilliant, rousing cadences, their language began to trail off in confusion.

    Some of them are achievers, no doubt, while others flaunt a gift of the garb, but oratorical prowess and personal attainments are never enough to ride the tide of avarice and immaturity coursing through the group, let alone to preside over an unwieldy Nigeria.

    Earlier, PACT waxed poetic, provoking the citizenry’s dormant passion with deceptive dialectics. At deeper perusal, the assemblage’s passion was shown for what it was, the spunk of beetles kindling wet wood.

    Today, their language echoes as infantile drivel, much like the battle-cries of four-year-olds playing war Generals against an army of hostile corn stalks.

    There is too much about them that rekindles outrage hitherto stoked by the predatory ruling class. For instance, PACT, like Nigeria’s two biggest political parties, suffers duplicity in ethics and multiplicity of covetous personae.

    Aspirants, goaded by ego and inordinate lust to become the group’s sole presidential candidate, squandered a rare opportunity to gift the country with credible candidates for political office on the altar of greed.

    It was a given that the PACT would fall apart. Their initial language was untranslatable by realistic yardsticks. They spoke the same gibberish as the incumbent ruling class they sought to unseat. Ultimately, they brought nothing new to the table, save a slew of platitudes and tiresome rhetoric.

    For instance, a candidate whispered in certain quarters to decriminalise homosexuality, in his desperation to earn the support of Nigeria’s LGBT divide – the latter urge him to make bold his resolve, like Social Democratic Party’s Donald Duke.

    Some other dizzy candidate, of the PACT assemblage, promised to turn marijuana into a national revenue earner and establish a N100, 000 national minimum wage package for the country in a manner reminiscent of APC and PDP’s lifeboat solutions. Another promised to rescue the Chibok girls, eradicate terrorism and entrench gender equality without a practical blueprint for achieving such.

    In their condemnation of the incumbent ruling class, they harp on trite banalities in a tenor peculiar to the former.

    Their desperate rants and promises establish them as dangerous daydreamers, who could and would rip apart, a nation already fragmented and ruined by bigotries, maladministration and plunder.

    Eventually, candidates of the various parties constituting the PACT platform thrashed blindly about the nation’s political swamp, inciting folk up and down rhetorical levels with witty abruptness. Eventually, their language did not make sense.

    They are casualties of what Benjamin Demott calls junk politics. Junk politics does not demand justice or reparation of rights. It personalises and moralises issues rather than clarifying them.

    It’s impatient with articulated conflict, enthusiastic about Nigeria’s optimism and moral character, and heavily dependent on ‘I feel your pain’ language and gesture, to borrow Demott-speak.